


Eleven Men Left

by Iamprongsie



Series: Last Ones Standing [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Everyone dies I’m really sorry about this, F/M, Gallipoli Campaign, Gen, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mild descriptions of violence, Not like that he’s just emotionally broken and he’s just waiting to die by this point, Period-Typical Homophobia, Rex is very very messed up, Suicide reference, What happens to Tup is taken from cases from the era and campaign
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 13:49:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17346347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamprongsie/pseuds/Iamprongsie
Summary: Cody grins at Anakin. “This entire campaign’s an epic fuckup, I’ll be surprised if everyone in the trench makes it out of here when they finally announce the evac.”





	Eleven Men Left

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so a few notes about this  
> \- Rex is an infantry captain in the New Zealand army, Cody is his Sergeant. Anakin is a Sergeant in the Australian Infantry, Obi-Wan is a Corporal  
> \- Obi-Wan is referred to as Ben

Night falls, dark and uncertain. Above their heads the shells rage, nightfall doesn’t mean a ceasefire at the moment. Not so soon after Lone Pine, where they lost so many men. The Allies are determined to have at least one more big push before the September rains start, so they’re supposed to be softening up the Turks before the big advance. 

Rex sighs and looks over at his and Cody’s men, focusing on the solitary Brit and the Aussie. They somehow got lost in the last campaign, can’t find their way back to their original battalions. Cody’s already adopted them into the squad, says that they need more men and that their original squad is all probably dead. 

His other men are all mostly sleeping, piled together close to the walls. Case is up on the parapet, loading the mortars with Dogma beside him, quietly lecturing him on the proper handling of the shells. Kix is sitting by Jesse, bandaging the wound in his arm. Fives and Echo are sleeping with their backs to the wall, guns within reach. Tup is asleep next to them, hair loose and over his face. 

The Brit is sleeping on the Aussie’s shoulder with the ease of companionship and the air of old friends. Rex knows that the Aussie has a wife, he also knows that the Brit is with the Australian army. They probably come from the same town. 

Cody walks over to him and offers him a sip from his flask. Rex takes it gratefully, takes a generous mouthful, and offers it to the Australian next to him. He thinks his name must be Anakin or something. Sounds kind of German. 

As if Anakin can read his mind, he opens his mouth.

“My family’s German. Nearly disowned me when I enlisted. We changed our name from Himmelswanderer to Skywalker when war broke out. I’m not like them though, I don’t want to be part of their empire.”

“I get it, don’t worry. We’re all mates here, and we’re here for the Turks. Not the Germans.”

Anakin smiles warily at him, and takes the flask. 

“Thanks, Captain.”

“Call me Rex, we’ve been stuck here together long enough.”

“Only if you stop calling me Sergeant Skywalker, I have no idea what’s going on here.”

Cody lifts his head from Rex’s shoulder and grins at Anakin. “None of us do, especially the brass. This entire campaign’s an epic fuckup, I’ll be surprised if everyone in the trench makes it out of here when they finally announce the evac.”

Rex grimly agrees, Anakin just looks shocked and quiet. The man can’t be older than twenty five, he’s still a kid in some ways. Still, Rex trusts him, knows that having him in his squad means that some of them might actually get out alive. 

Cody’s predictions start to come true. 

They lose Fives the next day, shot in the back while trying to drag a wounded Echo back to the trench. Rex knows they were ... close, but he’s not going to comment on the possible fraternisation in the ranks when Echo is staring at the wall blankly with tears running down his face and blood still leaking from the wound in his side. Besides, if he were to mention it, he’d immediately be labeled a hypocrite. God knows he and Cody have been fraternising enough for their squad to notice. 

He writes the letter to Fives’ family that night with a heavy heart and a shaking hand. He had three little brothers, and a sister. They’ll never see their brother again. Fives had kept a picture of them in his pocket, of the four of them when they were younger. He’s sitting with his sister Ahsoka on his lap, Harvey, Cuthbert, and Daniel behind him. Rex is suddenly, painfully reminded of his own photo, of him and his brother the day he graduated training. Jango hadn’t lived much longer after that photo, he was sent to Europe and died in the trenches. He had a kid, Rex remembers. Boba lives with his step grandmother now, orphaned at two years old. 

Cody signs off on the letter next to Rex’s signature. Another man down, nine more to go. There’s been whispers of an evacuation, but as usual the brass is incompetent and hasn’t pulled anything together yet. 

Echo is next to go, because where Fives goes Echo will follow. He stops listening to Rex, takes stupid risks, almost gets his head blown off in a trench run. Rex has a feeling that he’ll be writing the letter to Echo’s family soon enough. 

They all see it happen in slow motion. Echo is standing on the parapet, shells flying over his head. He’s ignoring Rex and Cody’s commands to get him down, and even Ben and Kix can’t get him to come down. One hits him, and he falls back into the trench, dead. Bits of blood and other things spray across all of them, painting everyone red. Tup throws up and starts to cry, and Dogma moves to comfort him. The rest of them are too shocked to move, and Rex can feel himself falling back onto his training so he doesn’t fall apart. 

Two down, eight men left. 

Cody writes the letter this time, because Rex is running on autopilot and too shocked to help. Echo didn’t have any siblings, but his mother loved him and he was all the family she had. Rex’s heart breaks for her and as Tup’s quiet sobs fill the trench he finally speaks, voice rough from disuse.

“It’s not fair, is it? We’re leading innocent men to their deaths, for the glory of the British Empire. All because some fuckass _kaiser_ wanted more power and some moron archduke got shot.”

Cody pulls Rex into his side and kisses his forehead. “It’s really not fair, but we have to try and get them out of here.”

“We have to try.” Rex replies, thinking of Mrs Waititi and the Tano family. They’ll never see their son or brother again. He’s already failed them, how many more families will he fail before this hellhole is over?

Case and Dogma die within minutes of each other. Case is blown up by a shell, Dogma cops enemy fire when they’re gaining ground. It’s fitting, Rex thinks, the brothers that were so close in life should die so close to each other. He writes one letter this time, addressed to their father. He knows they have a brother, out in Egypt or wherever the brass are sending the Kiwis now. 

Four men dead, six to go. Another family that Rex has failed. 

He adds them to the tally on his pistol. 

They get a few more men, but they’re still kids, don’t know how to work with the original group’s survivors. They’re also British, stuck on rules and regs and refusing to go up the parapet and load the shells. Rex prefers the Diggers, loud and raucous as they are. At least the Aussies are brave and don’t give a shit about regs when one second too long up there could cost you your life. 

Two days before another big push, Tup shoots himself in the foot. Immediately the new guys in the trench brand him a coward, calling him names and handing him a white feather stained with blood. Rex doesn’t even know where they got it from, but he marches over and snatches it from them while Cody and Ben read them the riot act. 

He carries Tup to the medics on the beach, and the kid cries into his shoulder all the way down. He’s only sixteen, he shouldn’t be here. He should be at home, messing around with his mates, sneaking beers off his dad. He shouldn’t be crying his eyes out on a battlefield because he couldn’t take it anymore. He shouldn’t be almost permanently injured, shunned by his trench mates. To be completely honest, Rex prefers this solution to the one where the kid swallows his rifle or jumps into enemy fire. At least he’s not dead. 

The chaplain that meets him outside the hospital tent is a mountain of a man, with long grey hair and a thick Irish accent. He tells Rex that it’s likely Tup will get written up for lying about his age on the enlistment forms, and deserting. He also says that it’s unlikely the kid will walk without a stick again, and that he’ll try and get him transferred to a paperwork unit, but since he’s with the British he doesn’t know how much sway he has. 

Qui-Gon Jinn never mentions a court martial, but it hangs between them. Rex knows that that’s Tup’s most likely future. 

Tup won’t be returning to Rex and Cody’s squad, he’s probably going to be shunned everywhere he goes, but at least he’s out of the fighting. That’s one family Rex hasn’t failed, but he still adds a tally to his pistol. There are five marks on it now, another five still to be added, if Cody’s prediction stands true. 

The big push means they’re all dragged out of their nice warm holes in the trench wall, and forced to run across heavily contested land in the middle of the night to ‘gain ground’. The ground they’re gaining, however, is usually their own trenches. They all know they’re losing this campaign, the Turks are on their home court and it shows. 

Rex stumbles across Jesse’s body when he’s gaining ground, and nearly doesn’t recognise it. His old friend is riddled with bullet holes, the only marker his dog tags and the tattoo on his head. He sighs and continues the assault, mentally drafting the letter he’s going to have to write to Jesse’s family. He has a little sister, only about three. She’s never going to know her big brother. 

When they’re back in their original trench at the end of the assault (this trench is as old as the campaign, Rex helped to dig it back in April when they first arrived), he writes the letter. Cody sits next to him, and Kix stands nearby glowering. The two of them had been an item, from way back home. How they managed to stay together through deployment without being found out is a miracle, in Rex’s opinion. Even he and Cody were separated during training, only finding each other on that last leave on Lemnos. 

He adds another tally mark onto his pistol while Kix belligerently rolls bandages next to him, using the repetitive motion to control his shaking hands. 

Six men gone, four men left. He’s failed another family, couldn’t protect one of his oldest friends. 

‘For the glory of the British Empire’, his ass. His friends are dying, there are kids enlisting to prove themselves! If this is glory, Rex wonders what shame is. 

Kix goes MIA in the next battle, since no one can find a body or a pile of guts that used to be Kix. Rex idly wonders if Kix has gone out somewhere and shot himself, or if he’s a POW, or dead in an enemy trench. He adds a seventh tally to his pistol, marking his seventh failure as the captain and leader of the squad. 

It’s only him, Cody, Ben, and Anakin left out of the original eleven. He finds himself constantly on edge, knowing that before the end of the week, someone’s going to die. 

The British kids that make up the rest of the squad are annoying and rude, and they threaten to report Rex and Cody when they find out about their relationship. Both of them just sigh, knowing it was coming. They both know that by the time it gets to the brass they’ll most likely be dead, and they’re not doing anything to harm them. 

While the two of them just ignore it, Anakin goes mad. He lays into the men, telling them to mind their own business and that they’d be dead several times over if it wasn’t for Cody and Rex’s leadership. It’s probably true, but the seven tally marks stare at him and remind him of everyone he’s failed. Ben just stands in front of the men and raises a sardonic eyebrow, says nothing. Eventually even the rudest and hardest Tommies back down in the presence of The Eyebrow, and apologise. 

Ben is killed in front of him and Anakin when they’re taking a trench; Anakin immediately falls to the ground and cradles his friend in his arms. 

“Come on, Anakin, we need to move!” He screams over the gunfire, but Anakin refuses. 

“I can’t move! I can’t leave him here!”

Rex sighs. He’s not letting anyone else die today. 

“Come on, you need to leave him! He’s dead!”

“I love him! I’m not leaving him!”

Oh. _Oh._ They were together then. Rex sighs and helps Anakin drag Ben’s body into a trench. Anakin jumps down after it and arranged Ben’s hands and hair, says a few words over it. As Rex gives him a hand up, Anakin wipes angry tears from his eyes, fixes his bayonet, and charges into battle. Miraculously he makes it back to the trench that night, covered in blood that isn’t his with a vacant stare. 

Later on, Cody and Rex sit on either side of Anakin while he writes two letters. One is to Anakin’s wife (apparently Ben’s other lover), while the other is to Ben’s mysterious grandfather. Rex scratches in another tally on his pistol. He’s failed another family, failed a grandfather and two lovers and two small children. 

He’s almost numb, until Cody dies. 

They’re standing out near the parapet, where the trench gets so shallow that it’s like standing on top of it. Suddenly Rex hears the whistling of a shell, hears Cody yell, and is pushed to the ground. 

He wakes up with his ears ringing and something wet on his face. It takes him a second to realise that it’s blood. It takes him another second to realise that it’s Cody’s blood, not his. 

Cody. Cody jumped in front of the shell to save him, and he’s probably dead. 

Rex can barely feel his legs, but he stumbles to his knees. Cody is still alive, his legs bloody stumps. More wetness materialises on Rex’s face, this time tears. The shrapnel he knows is lodged in his side is an issue for later, because Cody is bleeding out and chose to save _him._ He can’t even keep his lover alive, his best friend, his entire life. 

“You jumped in front of me.”

Cody smiles up at him, teeth stained with his own blood. “I did.”

“Why? I’m a failure! I couldn’t keep my men alive and I can’t keep you alive!” Rex is sobbing now, and Cody is crying as well. 

“Because I love you. You deserve another chance-“ Cody breaks off to cough blood, and Rex looks down to notice the shrapnel in his lovers chest. “-Another chance to live. Stay alive, please. I want you to live.”

“Cody-“ 

Cody coughs once more, blood staining his face and Rex’s uniform. 

“I’m sorry, love. I love-“ Cody’s head falls back, his breathing raspy and rattling. Eventually his eyes close, but Rex holds him until that awful death rattle is gone and the body starts to go stiff in his arms. 

He barely remembers carrying Cody’s body back into the trench, barely remembers telling Anakin what had happened and why he was covered in blood. Anakin helps him bury Cody, then pulls the shrapnel out of his side and bandages it. Rex writes a letter to Cody’s grandmother, a woman he remembers fondly from his childhood. He feels so awful that Cody’s given his life to save him, that he has to write this awful awful letter to his best friend’s grandmother. She was one of the best people in Rex’s life growing up, given that his biological parents were awful and the only decent parental figures he had were Mrs Turei and his stepmother. 

If he makes it out of this war, the first thing he’s going to do is lay flowers at Cody’s memorial. If he doesn’t, well, he’ll join Cody up in whatever’s up in the sky. Maybe they’ll be stars, lighting people’s ways. Maybe their souls will be tethered to this place forever, maybe they’ll go back to New Zealand and see the rolling hills and beautiful beaches, see the Haka performed one last time. Maybe they’ll just cease to exist. 

Another tally in his pistol, another family failed. One left, aside from him, with no hints of an evac or even more troops. 

 

He shuts down, doesn’t remember the next few days. As a Sergeant, Rex’s new 2IC, Anakin takes over what’s left of their squad until his own death. 

Anakin’s death is barely a surprise by now. He had become more and more unreliable in battle, rushing in with his bayonet fixed, ignoring Rex’s instructions and orders. Rex recognises this from Echo’s behaviour towards the end, pulls his head out of his grief (he’ll be damned if he loses anyone else), and tries to steer his friend away from insanity. He can’t write another letter, to Padmé and their children and his mother and step siblings. He can’t fail someone else. 

But he does. Anakin Skywalker leads the charge in one of the final battles of the campaign; there’s finally been news from the Brass. The British at Helles are evacuating first from Suvla bay, then the ANZACs at Gaba Tepe. They’re under orders to behave in the same manner until the time and date of their evacuation, which means at least another run to claim trenches before their evac time.

Anakin leads the charge and is shot down almost immediately; the Turks recognise him and want revenge for the squad that he’d wiped out on his own. Rex sees him fall, and knows that no one with that many bullet wounds is going to get up again. 

He writes the final letters, one to Padmé and the twins (the poor woman will have received two letters and two telegrams in a month, her children will never know their fathers), the other to Shmi and her family, Cliegg and Owen and Owen’s wife, Beru. His pistol mocks him from its holster, the ten marks shining in the weak lamplight.

He’s lost all ten of his men, failed all of their families. His dreams are full of their deaths, Fives stopping mid step and falling to the ground, Echo falling backwards into the trench, riddled with shrapnel, Tup crying into his shoulder as he was carried through the camp (Rex finds out that Tup was court martialled, found guilty, and faced a firing squad of British soldiers), Case hit by a shell, Dogma shot. He stumbles over Jesse’s body, hears a single shot in the middle of the night and knows that it’s Kix, stands over Ben’s body as Cody bleeds out in his arms and Anakin shouts a war cry and crumbles to the ground. 

He writes his own letter, and sticks it in his pocket, just in case. He knows he’s not going to get off of this peninsula anytime soon. 

 

Rex at least makes it to the night of their scheduled evacuation. The only ones left are him and a couple of the Brits, they’re all ignoring him anyway unless he gives them a direct order. They manage to leave their trench without alerting the snipers, and the only problem is that some moron decides to light a cigarette and nearly brings the entire Turkish army down on their heads. 

The moon doesn’t bother them when they’re sneaking through the old trench networks, but it becomes a problem when they hear sniper fire in front of them. Rex decides to push onward, knowing that snipers can’t hit a moving target and that they need to get off this rock right now. 

They’re running along and avoiding the snipers when Rex stumbles over a rock and trips. His squad continues around him, like he told them to. He feels a shot to his chest, another through his heart. Everything feels cold, and pain radiates through his chest. 

He’s been resigned to his fate since Cody died, he’s not surprised. He can’t wait to see Cody again, and it’s this thought that comforts him as his heart stops and his vision is filled with white. 

Cody stands in front of him, the scar on his face standing out white against his tan skin. Rex almost can’t believe it, knows this is a hallucination, but it feels so real. 

“Hey Rex, you made it.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- Court Martialling was a real thing that happened to deserters or ‘cowards’, it was often very unfair and was often carried out by another army, not the one the soldier had enlisted with  
> \- This is probably not very historically accurate, sorry


End file.
